It seems unbelievable to me that someone would be appointed to such a position who went on "sex tourism" trips, let alone involving teenage boys, let alone involving a "slave auction," and to crown it all, it wasn't secret, he wrote about in his own book!

A "conservative" government appointed this person? And is now downplaying it?

For those of you who complain the U.S. is too religious, and if only we could be more secular like Europe...why is it unreasonable to suppose this is one of the fruits of such social change? France was once a very religious nation.

Well in fairness padre, France also had its share of pretty horrendous religious wars and persecution as well so I'm not sure going back to the days of Christian fervor is what we want either. I think the world has more than enough Islamic fervor without Christians jumping into the fray.

That said, the issue is that Europe, particularly Western Europe was swung so far to the secular side that excusing people foor raping 13 year old girls and enjoying the young boy slave market is considered acceptable. There is evidently something in the psyche of man that doesn't allow for moderation either religuious or secular. It seems its either all in or not at all.

Obama was hilarious enough, bringing in a bunch of tax cheats and self-proclaimed commie Van Jones, but the Frenchies have shown him what a really really bad vetting process looks like; they hired a guy who bragged about exploiting slavery in a published book! Honestly, nobody in the Sarcozy camp read the book? Outrageous.

word verification: laseburi

"The French official claimed, 'I was too lazy and busy, laseburi, as we say, to read the Mitterand book.'"

As Gaviglio enters the room, the six-foot-two, 225-plus-pound Kennedy grabs the five-foot-three, 103-pound waitress and throws her on the table. She lands on her back, scattering crystal, plates and cutlery and the lit candles. Several glasses and a crystal candlestick are broken. Kennedy then picks her up from the table and throws her on Dodd, who is sprawled in a chair. With Gaviglio on Dodd’s lap, Kennedy jumps on top and begins rubbing his genital area against hers, supporting his weight on the arms of the chair. As he is doing this, Loh enters the room. She and Gaviglio both scream, drawing one or two dishwashers. Startled, Kennedy leaps up. He laughs. Bruised, shaken and angry over what she considered a sexual assault, Gaviglio runs from the room. Kennedy, Dodd and their dates leave shortly thereafter, following a friendly argument between the senators over the check.

Yawn stretch. Seeing that the O has a supporter of pedophiles and NAMBLA's Hay as a Czar we are entering into a new age. The age of acceptance. These people "do care about the children". Looks like the joke is on us.

This came up in the comments last week. The English translation of Mitterand's book is fairly imprecise. Mitterand uses the word ephebe to describe the prostitutes -- which according to French wikipedia comes from the Greek, referring to young men between 18 and 20 undergoing civil and military training.

Note that we in the US use the word "girl" to describe women well into their twenties, as part of the patriarchal disparagement of women. Depending on context, a "young girl" can refer to either a college freshman or a first grader.

But I will bow to the superior knowledge of those who have been there. If all the male prostitutes in Bangkok are underaged, that's a damning indictment.

Mitterand and Paris raised Polanski have the same need: they want to have control and sexual dominance over a helpless slave offered up to them as proof of their power to live a lawless life. In scripture that is identified as the Sin nature, that leads to lawless acts called sins. So Father Martin is on to something saying that the antidote that has power to change these men's hearts lies in Christianity. Therefore we and our children live in greater danger in today's neo-pagan world of violence and sexual liscense that was simply not accepted 60 years ago when we lived in Christian Nations. The times have been a changing fast, for sure.

I see people are focusing on the term "slave market." To me that would accurately describe the lineup of whores on that pay cable TV show. Any man with enough funds can look over the "girls," select one, and rent her body for a period of time. As far as I could tell, she had no control over who would be allowed to stick his member into her.

LOL. Yes, if only Catholicism had a greater presence in France, shameless pedophilia would less of a problem.

Actually France is a predominately Catholic nation, maybe not so much in practice anymore. But buck up; at the rate its becoming Muslim, pedophile priests will be the least of its problems. Assuming it ever was much of one to begin with.

WTF??? Is pederasy no longer deviant behavior in some societies? Is it? I thought it was, but I'm seeing too many signs that it's not anymore. And I don't believe that's any kind of good sign of social progress.

FLS...In Thailand the family will sell a child to the Brothels where Europeans fly in to get their child sex fantasies serviced. The children are doing what their Buddist family told them they must do for their family. The Christian missionaries there run schools and re-train the children sex workers for a real life after first redeeming them (that means buying them back)which is at the heart of Jesus's message to the world. The approval of evil in exchange for monetary compensation is at the heart of the non-Christian world's view of "ethical conduct". Slavery has always gone on, and its restraint has been a recent Christian activity. You shall know them by their use of their money. The European elites are first and foremost still under the ethics that come from the classical culture of Greece and Rome. That is one reason why they cooperated in the Holocaust so easily. John Kerry was right in his view that American Scots-Irish derived culture is not as sophisticated as European culture, thank God.

"Remember, to some people, Catholicism is forever tarnished by the actions of a few priests doing in secret what the Minister of Culture brazenly endorses."

And, maybe this is how it should be. Because the Catholic Church is supposed to be the protector, the sanctuary, the hope. If the hope becomes the terror, it's taking advantage both of the person and of the person's yearning for God. The brazen pederast is acting in the way that sinful humanity is said to act. The secret pederasty is saying, essentially, that God supports sexual abuse. The former is evil. The latter is evil and anti-christ.

It's not just the Catholic church either, and it's not limited to sexual abuse. The church has itself to blame for the rejection of the church that leads to brazen evils, because it hid so long in secret, and betrayed like Judas the Christ which it kissed in public. Dante cast Judas at the deepest pit in hell, and with him you'll find the religious leaders who committed grievous sins and politicians who used religion to further their own abuse and power.

However, to say that the religious wars of Europe were really about religion also suggests sleeping through a lot of European history. It's like saying Henry the VIII formed the Anglican church over a debate about the Eucharist.

Religion is a tool men and women abuse to further their own indulgence of sins. Just like artists and politicians often do.

The hope is that despite all this there's still hope that something more is true, something better is the ultimate reality, something greater is in store. True religion continues to tell us that those who abuse boys, who abuse religion, who rape and enslave are utterly wrong, and there's going to be justice and salvation. This hope pushes us to fight against these evils wherever they are found, and proclaim that the wrong is truly wrong. Even if it is clothed in a nice suit, performing priestly duties, or seated in a director's chair.

However, to say that the religious wars of Europe were really about religion also suggests sleeping through a lot of European history. It's like saying Henry the VIII formed the Anglican church over a debate about the Eucharist.

Let me try again. There was a time when Christian fervor fueled those religious wars, which was my point. Had such fervor remained in Western Europe you might see similar conflicts except this time it might be Christians vs Muslims as the new Protestants. Yes, the wars were political from the standpoint that the state, or crown was also greatly influenced by the Pope. Yes religion was used as a tool and the fervor of the populace made it all the easier.

Had for example, the folks in 1500s Paris been as lackluster Catholics as they are today, the St. Bartholomew Massacre would have never occured. Just a suggestion but perhaps you might refer back to my original post on the topic. I could be wrong but I don't believe I actually ever stated that the religious wars were about strictly about religion.

Screwtape himself couldn't have planned a better method to destroy the Church than pedophile priests, for the reasons you describe.

And Mitterrand shows the next step: celebrating the commodification of young people for sex.

For many reasons, including this, it feels as if we are on the edge of a wholesale revolution: economic, cultural, religious. Such moments are well beyond one person's ability to note, certainly, but it feels that way to me.

One could consider only one such spectacle abominable from a moral point of view, but I liked it beyond the reasonable one […] The profusion of young boys very attractive and immediately available puts to me in a state of desire that I no longer need to hide or to refine.

The money and the sex, I am in the middle of my system, that which functions finally because I know that I will not be refused.

This has hit Le Monde today front page of their website many comments for Le Monde they of course highlight one from a liberal but there are many of the commenters having the same reaction.

As were French commenters-the proles in the comments at Levy's[the French philosopher's] website .

Who were originally getting deleted but someone thought more about that and re-instated the comments.

So I don't think it can be blamed on translation.

Again I have trouble with the issue of what "choice" what "freedom" the young men had in the economic conditions of the sex trade business of Thailand.

I'm not an expert on that-but from other quotes by Mitterand he seems to know that drug abuse makes it possible, the inequality and poor chances and conditions makes it possible.

I know this is provincial but it's about the value of freedom the ability to choose. Mitterand himself seems to admit that he had all of that while they- have next to nothing in that regard-he took full advantage with full knowledge of that.

English:I took the [envelope] to pay for boys [...] Évidemment, I read what one could write on the trade of the boys from here. [...] I know what there is of truth. Ambient misery, the generalized maquereautage, mountains of dollars that brings back when the kids withdraw from them only crumbs, the drugs which makes devastation, the diseases, sordid details of all this traffic. But that does not prevent me from going back there.

MC - it was a National Front politician who raised the book quotations in the past week. They actually are fascists, holocaust deniers, etc. I say that makes them far left, but the left lies and calls national socialists "far right" when there is nothing conservative about them.

Anyways, this guy is a shmuck, and so is Sarko for appointing him despite the book (it apparently sold 190k copies in France). When you're using hookers in Thailand, "slave" and "boy" mean exactly what they say.

For the whole "it was mistranslated" crowd, note that it was French politicians who first brought this up. Since they would have read the original, and not the translation, you can't blame an imprecise translation. Mitterand does claim that he was using "garcon" to mean boy like a college football coach or army officer - i.e. young men in their late teens early 20s. But it's freaking Thailand...

I've never really hung with the best of society, but even among my low-life scum circle, I know virtually no one as vile as the average politician, or at least so it seems. This is regardless of government level or nation.

There must be something about power that attracts the seriously broken character. This is a significant argument for small, weak government.

All anyone has to do to destroy any organization, then, is to infiltrate and behave badly.

This often works, of course, and it was a favorite tactic of the FBI in the '60s and '70s. [See Black Panthers, The]

But it doesn't seem to work nearly as well with the government. [See everyone in government.]

You don't hear, for example, anyone talking about the public school system being taken down, even though they seem to be at least as densely populated by child molesters as the Church, and have much the same attitude toward protecting their staff.

I first ran across it in Bonjour Tristesse, so I thought it was pretty mainstream. It never came up in casual conversation ("Hey, is that your pimp over there?" was never part of any interaction I ever had.)

All anyone has to do to destroy any organization, then, is to infiltrate and behave badly.

That's not all a person has to do. Organizations with doctrinal purity and ethical foundations root out those who betray the faith. That's what the early church did.

To destroy an organization, someone has to infiltrate it, be approved by it, be given honor by it. To have this happen, generally, one part of the mission of the organization is sacrificed for a seeming more important aspect. Having a priest (or good preacher, or good leader) in a setting was seen as more important than making sure that person acted in complete line with the testimony.

And the church, or any religion, should have significant stricter standards, and have higher expectations in these things than teachers, etc. A history teacher shouldn't make grammar or math mistakes, but if they do it's not a crucial mistake. But if a math teacher can't add, or a grammar teacher doesn't use commas or periods correctly it's a major problem. They're not fit for the job, even if they're the only ones who want the job.

Pogo, your Screwtape analogy is spot on. Allowing these kinds of sins, overlooking them and dismissing them, is the best way to rot the church. This kind of stuff is what fed into, and still feeds into, the rejection of the church in Europe and here. That this isn't how it has to be is the hope, and those of us who still have this hope, I think, have to both condemn the wrongs and point to how it can and should be if we truly pay attention to the whole Gospel.

Hoosier, you're right. Goes to show the religious fervor often has very little to do with the actual religion the fervent are trying to foment. Which is why the church, in its earliest days, tried to set up guidelines and models to help steer these problems. That these were ignored or "adapted" led to countless disasters in the name of religion. Which is terribly sad. Terribly ruining what might have been. Which is why I'm utterly, absolutely against any kind of theocracy ever being instituted again.

I see three reasons why pedophilia is a problem for the church. First, pedophiles are attracted to any role that allows them access to children. Dan Savage regularly posts installments of his Youth Pastor Watch to slog.thestranger.com Religious leaders are not alone: teachers, scoutmasters, and others who work with youth are caught molesting them.

Second, celibacy weeds out those who cannot picture living their whole lives without having sex with women. Those who are not attracted to women can see this as a gift from God.

Third, the hierarchical nature of the Church kept the pedophiles at work, rather than weeding them out. Protestant churches hire their own ministers; they are not forced to take whoever the bishop sends to them. If there's a scandal, they can fire the person responsible, and make sure he never works with children again. In contrast, Catholic bishops believed pedophilia was a sickness that could be cured, or a sin that could be avoided. They kept recycling pervos from parish to parish.

Rather, to ask directly those who insist we secularize further--and point to Europe as an example--why we shouldn't see this sort of "tolerance" as part of the package they are proposing?

In what way is tolerance of sex with boys related to secularization? That is rather painfully ironic in light of the documented history of pedophilia in the clergy and its "tolerance" by their superiors.

Politico is reporting that a group agitating for the release of director Roman Polanski last year gave $34,000 to Barack Obama's presidential campaign and the Democratic Party, Federal Election Commission records show.

The most generous Democratic donor of the vocal pro-rape contingent, Hollywood mogul Harvey Weinstein, in an open letter called on "every US filmmaker to lobby against any move to bring Polanski back to the US, where he could face life in jail."

Weinstein, who one presumes will lobby the government of Barack Obama to help his friend the rapist, last year gave $28,500 to the Democratic National Committee and its White House Victory Fund.

He was also a big financial supporter of Obama's presidential rival-turned Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, whose campaigns and committees have received $88,000 from kidrape-friendly Weinstein over the years.

Politico is reporting that a group agitating for the release of director Roman Polanski

Not a group. There is no "Obamaphiles for Pedophiles." Certain individuals who supported Obama want Polanski to skate free.

The most generous Democratic donor

never gave Obama a dime. He was a Hillary fan.

Barack Obama refused comment.

This line appears nowhere in the post at all.

The other thing in common: All but two of the individuals listed in the article were Jews, like Polanski. Considering three-quarters of Jews are liberals, the fact that some Jews donated to Democrats is unremarkable.

Frederic Mitterrand is an open homosexual, and try has hard as gay advocates try - they cannot disaggregate the ancient, enduring association of male homosexuals prediliction with pederasty...orders of magnitude more common than male heterosexuals chasing young girls for sex.

It's one of those dirty gay "secrets" that is incredibly obvious to any observer with common sense and some critical thinking ability. Which is rebutted by gay advocates with hysterical denials...

But the truth of the matter is a gay male is far more likely to be a "chickenhawk" than the hetero male antipode.

Remember the whole "pedophile priest" tale was not of asexual priests preying on "children". It was certain gay males in the priesthood pursuing and tapping any receptive teen male age 11 to 17 they could get their hands on.

I've been through Thailand while in the military. Unfortunately as an engaged man being actively drug-tested in a fitness for duty program...so two really fun things were off the schedule. However, I had a few days, and liked the food, beaches, temple things, Bangkok life and gem markets so much I did a week vacation, then a Phuket vacation with the wife years later and a Christian charity gig of 4 days in a week there years later.

In every urban area, I noticed sex tourists. Japanese, Chinese, Germans, Brits, Americans, Israelis, etc. And the groups divided between hetero and homo tourists and from my experience..the homos gravitated to smooth-skinned young boys except for the Japanese homos. While the hetero sex tourists were in the 17-25 age market for female flesh.And the reaction of the Thais to gay "benny boys" was --"sure! like we care!" But others, including some longtime residents, Thais...said they disapprove of sex tourists looking for young girls far more. The girls should be protected....while the gay boys were thought not really worth protecting....

Father Martin Fox, I think you're right, and you said it clearly enough.

I am suggesting one feature of the "too religious" USA is that no such person would ever get appointed, or if he did, he'd be gone once this hit the news. It wouldn't be dismissed as "overblown."

I agree, and I think this is an argument for being Christian friendly even if you aren't Christian and would prefer some other religion to take off. In our day, Christianity is defending heavily challenged traditional assumptions necessary to the foundation of any decent society, not just a Christian one.

Remove the Christian influence all at once (say you got a wish on a magic ring), and long before any alternative could take its place you'd see a plunge into nihilistic perversity that would wreck at minimum the lives of a generation of children, and likely put them beyond the reach of any sort of constructive, self-disciplining spirituality. Education and public standards might be so warped you'd never recover.

One of Mitterrand's most sick statements goes something like, "maybe I made a mistake, but not a sin/misdemeanor/misbehavior(?), never a crime." I really don't know what's the most appropriate translation for "faute" in this case, but whatever it is, he denies it also.

"Une erreur oui, un crime non, une faute même pas".

from wikipedia:

"Prostitution has been illegal in Thailand since 1960, when a law was passed under pressure from the United Nations. However, the prohibition is seldom enforced./ Today prostitution is illegal in Thailand"

So when the French Minister says he DIDN'T commit any crimes by exploiting paid Thai sexual tourism over the years, isn't he blatantly lying, without even considering the age of victims? I saw absolutely no one in the entire French media address this point. It would have

been the first thing any American reporter would have asked. Also, no French media dares to invite a non-profit organization that works against sexual tourism to speak on the issue. This isn't yellow journalism, it's as-brown-as-it-gets journalism.

And then there is the reaction of basically almost all French journalists to Mitterand's slobbering defense speech, a reaction which is dumbfounding. Well, he said he is no pedophile, that he abhors sexual tourism, so case closed. There's nothing to think about here, folks, move along. Go back to eating fromage and wine, and let poor, feel-sorry-for-me Frederic continue his job as Culture Minister.